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After discovering her piece Aftermath a few years ago, and having revisited it several times since, I’ve been an adherent of Rachel Cusk’s. I am tempted to re-read that piece now, but I know that its stark, hypnotic beauty would move me too much and prevent me from writing anything about her latest book. Kudos is the third in a trilogy of what feel like semi-autobiographical novels, featuring a painfully vacant writer (and absent mother) who is going through the motions on the literary festival circuit, rarely speaking, as those around her uncontrollably pour confessions, philosophies, and personal quandaries upon her as if she’s their unpaid therapist. Continue reading →

You probably shouldn’t read Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I’m not normally one to discourage reading (or intellectual endeavour), but this is a strange exception. It’s not exactly that Peterson is wrong about anything specific, although he occasionally very much is. It is rather that on many topics, he is right, but his extreme confidence in mixing many correct observations with some incorrect ones, combined with his bleak view of humanity make its potential for harming your worldview outweigh its potential for improving your life. His unwavering certitude is one reason I recommend against reading it: someone impressionable might not be able to distinguish between where his views are mainstream versus where they are highly dubious, to say nothing of how strident and repetitive his writing can be. (Most of the best things he says are said more eloquently elsewhere.) But my primary objection is with a sort of self-contradiction that exists in his ideas. Continue reading →